Unreported Foreign Accounts or Foreign Income may Prevent International Travel

Unreported Foreign Accounts or Foreign Income may Prevent International Travel

Golding & Golding – Offshore Disclosure & FATCA Compliance

If you have any intention of traveling internationally and have undisclosed foreign accounts and/or unreported foreign income, you should be cautious.

With the implementation of FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), the IRS has more tools at its disposal that it can use against you in its “war” on offshore tax evasion. Specifically, two tools that the IRS and US government can use against you in fighting offshore tax evasion and unreported for accounts are custom holds and passport revocation/denial.

Passport Revocation and/or Denial

The IRS has shifted its focus towards offshore tax evasion, and many “innocent” people are getting stuck in the wave of tax crime allegations — even when they did nothing wrong other than being unaware of the law.

While offshore tax evasion has always been one of the mainstays in the dirty dozen tax scams published by the IRS each year, offshore disclosure has become a priority in enforcement.

Why? Because the United States realizes that it is missing out on billions of dollars of taxes, fines and penalties that would otherwise be due for failing to report foreign accounts and failing to disclose foreign income. With the introduction of the offshore disclosure programs, the IRS received first-hand information about just how much they were losing out on. As a result, the US government continues to add more weapons to its arsenal – with passport revocation the latest.

For example, if you owe more than $50,000 of tax debt to the Internal Revenue Service (understanding that the IRS/lawmakers did not “parse out” a specific definition of tax debt may be) the US government has the absolute right to limit international travel by revoking your passport.

Customs Holds

A Customs hold is one of the more unfair tools used by the US government to achieve its intended goal of extracting information from you, which you do not want to provide (and have a right to not provide aka right against self-incrimination). Under most circumstances, when you receive a call from the IRS or a visit from two special agents, your response should be a simple “I want to call my lawyer”

Conversely, if you’re at the airport on your way to a family occasion, business travel, or traveling just for fun, the last thing you want to be confronted with is a government official at the airport telling you to “come with me.” At this time, the government official may call in “backup” and try to interrogate you (aka “question”) at the airport – outside of the presence of your attorney… unless you were lucky enough to be traveling with your attorney.

What should I do – Get Compliant

The fact of the matter is not every tax cheat, tax evader or individual who simply non-willfully failed to report foreign accounts or report foreign income is going to be hit by the IRS. With that said, if you have foreign accounts and plan on traveling internationally, the chances of being audited, investigated or examined by the US government increases significantly — and the penalties can be significant.

The risk of being caught is increased even more due to the new Foreign Account Enforcement rules otherwise known as FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act). The simplest way for most individuals to get into compliance quickly is to submit to offshore disclosure.

The following is a summary of the two main disclosure programs (OVDP and the “Streamlined Program”):

OVDP vs. Streamlined

In order to assist you better understand the distinction between the two different IRS foreign account disclosure programs, we are providing the following summary for your reference:

If you or your business has unreported or undisclosed foreign accounts, offshore assets, or foreign income, then you may be considering whether you should enter the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) or the IRS Streamlined Offshore Disclosure Program, and what the definition of “Willful” is.

Whether or not a person enters Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) or the IRS Streamlined Offshore Disclosure Program will depend on the facts and circumstances of each taxpayer’s situation. No two tax situations are identical, and the failure to properly submit to the correct program can have serious consequences for the unsuspecting taxpayer.

Why Comply with IRS Foreign Disclosure Laws?

Because if you fail to comply with FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) as well as general IRS Foreign Disclosure Laws, the IRS has the authority to penalize you upwards of 100% of the value of your offshore assets and accounts as well as:

Collect Taxes for prior tax years

Collect Interest on outstanding tax liability for prior years

Penalize you for the failure to report foreign accounts on the tax return (Schedule B and 8938)

Penalize you for the failure to report foreign gifts (3520)

Penalize you for the failure to report foreign Trusts (3520 and 3520A)

Penalize you for the failure to report ownership in Foreign Corporations (5471 and 5472)

The reason why international tax law compliance has taken center stage is because under the new FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) laws, foreign countries are actively reporting the bank and financial accounts of US citizens and US legal permanent residents to the IRS and U.S. Government.

If a foreign country is interested in working with the United States, the foreign country will enter into an “ Intergovernmental Agreement” (IGA) with the United States. These agreements are reciprocity agreements, which means that not only will the foreign country report the information to the IRS, but the IRS will also reciprocate by providing the same information to foreign country tax authorities.

Why Enter either OVDP or the Modified Streamlined Program?

There are the only two approved programs by the Internal Revenue Service that can bring a taxpayer into compliance. Instead of entering the programs, a taxpayer may qualify to directly report under the reasonable cause exception, in which the taxpayer directly submits the forms with a statement explaining why they were not properly filed instead of paying a penalty.

*The IRS is not known to be sympathetic, and if you choose the “Reasonable Cause/Delinquency FBAR Submission” option and the IRS does not believe you, you may be subject to IRS Audit and/or examination, as well as being disqualified from entering either the OVDP or Streamlined Program. Worse yet, the IRS has all of your unreported and undisclosed foreign account and foreign income information – which can lead to serious fines and penalties.

**If the taxpayer submits the forms to the IRS without submitting to the FBAR Delinquency/Reasonable Cause or IRS Disclosure Programs, it can be considered a “silent disclosure” or “quiet disclosure.” If the IRS learns of the Quiet or Silent Disclosure, the IRS will penalize you heavily as well as consider initiating criminal proceedings against you. In this scenario, not only will the IRS seek to take all of your money and assets through the implementation of penalties and levies, but you may be spending the next 2 to 20 years in prison for tax evasion or tax fraud.

What is the Difference between OVDP and the Streamlined Program?

Before making a decision regarding voluntary disclosure, it is important to understand the difference between the two main programs.

OVDP (Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program Requirements)

In accordance with OVDP filing requirements, The Applicant will then be required to pay the outstanding tax, along with estimated interest, a 20% penalty on the outstanding tax, as well as an “FBAR” Penalty. The Penalty is 27.5% (or 50% if any of the foreign accounts are held at an IRS “Bad Bank”) on the highest year’s “annual aggregate total” of unreported accounts (Accounts which were previously reported are not calculated into the penalty amount).

For OVDP, the annual aggregate total is determined by adding the “maximum value” of each unreported account for each year, in each of the last 8 years. To determine what the maximum value is, the taxpayer will add up the highest balances of all their accounts for each year. In other words, for each tax year within the compliance period, the application will locate the highest balance for each account for each year, and total up the values to determine the maximum value for each year.

Thereafter, the OVDP applicant selects the highest year’s value, and multiplies it by either 27.5%, or possibly 50% if any of the money was being held in what the IRS considers to be one of the “bad banks.” When a person is completing the penalty portion of the application, the two most important things are to breathe, and remember that by entering the program the applicant is seeking to avoid CRIMINAL PROSECUTION!

When it comes to the Streamlined Program, the penalty is limited to 5% on the highest “year-end” balance for the last 6-years. The reason is that if the person was non-willful, they should not be overly-penalized if there was an artificial increase in the value of the bank accounts – such as from the sale of a home during the tax year.

(A complete breakdown of OVDP requirements can be found on our OVDP Page, by Clicking Here)

OVDP is Unfair for Non-Willful Taxpayers

Before the implementation of the modified streamlined program, it was difficult for individuals who were non-willful (no specific definition, but generally “without intent to deceive or defraud”) to become compliant. Why? Because if you are non-willful, you still had to go through the filing procedures as if you were willful, and then opt out of the penalty structure and open yourself up for audit.

Not such a big deal, except for the fact that you also had to pay 20% penalty on the outstanding taxes that you owed along with a 27.5% penalty on the highest year’s annual aggregate (unless you successfully “opted out” from the penalty structure – which came with a whole other set of headaches). As you can imagine, for individuals who simply inherited some money overseas, had no international dealings, and had no idea that they were required to report foreign passive income (Interest income) in a country that does not tax its own citizens on passive income earnings — providing this information to the IRS was a huge burden.

What is the Modified Streamlined Program?

In order to avoid “non-willful” applicants from having to go through the entire OVDP process before opting out, the IRS and Department of the Treasury modified a small program in existence, called the streamlined program, which was very limited. The IRS expanded the program to basically allow anyone who was non-willful to enter the program.

The program reduced the amount of documentation that applicants were required to file to only three years of amended tax returns and six years of FBAR (Foreign Account Reporting Statements). In addition, there was no penalty on the tax amount that was due and no penalty on the value of income generating foreign real estate that was not previously disclosed. Moreover, the 27.5% penalty was reduced down to 5%, or completely waived if the foreign residence requirements were met.

Penalty Waiver: there is a small facet of the modified streamlined program called the Modified Foreign Offshore Program. If a person qualifies for the modified stream of program (which means they acted non willfully) and they can prove they lived overseas for a total of 330 days out of the tax year in any year within the last three years, then they may qualify to have the penalty waived.

The Streamlined Programs sounds great, right? Well it is, unless you are attempting to wrongfully evade the 27.5% penalty by entering the program when you knew you were willful.

What if you are caught trying to sneak into the Streamlined Program?

I cannot stress to you enough to not try and enter the Streamlined Program if you were willful. If you knowingly enter the streamlined program and it is found that you acted willfully in your failure to disclose and report your overseas and foreign assets and income you will most likely be prosecuted by the IRS.

The IRS made this fact known in a recent public relations statement. From the IRS’ perspective, if you wrongfully enter this program in order to avoid paying the full penalty amount what you have done is stolen 27.5% or 50% of the penalty amount due to the IRS – and this does not make the IRS very happy.

Even worse is that you may be subject to criminal prosecution. And, since you have already disclosed all the foreign financial information in your Streamlined Program application, you will be in a tough position to try and defend yourself.

Why is the Modified Streamlined program in Jeopardy?

Just like in everything in life, a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch. The IRS has learned that several individuals who were willful in their failure to report undisclosed foreign tax and bank information have been caught trying to sneak into the modified streamlined program in order to pay a reduced penalty – or avoid the penalty altogether This contradicts the IRS’ intention which was to modify and expand the Streamlined Offshore Disclosure Program to assist taxpayers who otherwise would be overburdened by having to enter the OVDP and opt out of the penalty structure.

There is No Reason to be Scared of the OVDP or the Streamlined Programs

The goal of this article is not to scare you. Rather, it is to warn you to just be cautious if you are entering into these programs. Way too many inexperienced and unscrupulous attorneys, CPAs and enrolled agents see these programs as a way to scare individuals.

If You are going to enter a Foreign Disclosure Program, use an Attorney

While CPAs and enrolled agents (who are not also attorneys) may charge less than an attorney is important to note that you do not have an attorney client privilege with CPAs and enrolled agents. What that means, is that if it turns out you wrongfully entered the streamlined program and the IRS wants to speak with your representative, unless your representative is an attorney, there is no privilege between a CPA and Taxpayer when a Criminal Matter is at issue.

OVDP & STREAMLINED SUCCESS!

- Successfully Represented Highly Compensated Earners in a Streamlined Program Disclosure with more than 175 Accounts.

- Successfully represented a non-willful client through the Streamlined Program, even though he had multiple accounts at "Bad Banks" including accounts in a Tax Haven jurisdiction.

- Successfully received notification from the IRS of no penalties being issued against a high-income earning family with more than 20+ foreign accounts worldwide, including India and Canada. Based on their specific facts and circumstances, we were able to submit them using the Reasonable Cause option.

- Successfully completed a multi-person comprehensive disclosure matter for a family with submissions involving both Offshore Disclosure and Reasonable Cause applications.

- Acceptance of a Streamlined Domestic Offshore Disclosure Program submission for a client with multiple accounts, which had several U.S. Taxpayer signatories and more than $1,000,000 of funds in Costa Rica, and secured a full-penalty waiver.

- We successfully represented high-net-worth international taxpayers after their CPA fumbled an audit which left taxpayers with nearly $1,000,000 in penalties, and secured both spouses’ acceptance into the IRS Domestic Offshore Streamlined Program.